


The Rain Has Gone (I can see clearly now)

by Amemait



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: GFY, HDS Beltane 2015, Immediately post Deathly Hallows, Unexplained portions of the magical world because the PoV character isn't Harry, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-18
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4820936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amemait/pseuds/Amemait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To die would be an awfully big adventure, someone had said in a Muggle book Severus had once read with a friend at his shoulder, in a park, in a sunset, long ago. Right now, it's an adventure he wants absolutely no part in.</p>
<p>Which makes it rather awkward that he’s already dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rain Has Gone (I can see clearly now)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chantefable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/gifts).



> Author: bakaknight/Amemait  
> Pairing: Gen, implied future Drarry  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Disclaimer: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.  
> Betaed by: this-girl-is  
> Author's Note: Happy last ever Beltane everybody!
> 
> Previously posted to http://hds-beltane.livejournal.com/153073.html as part of the 2015 Beltane fest.

The last time that Severus Snape awoke was also the first.  
  
The Fat Friar was standing over him, sneering slightly, and looking altogether less jolly than Severus was used to seeing in the old ghost.  
  
“The Baron won't like this,” the Friar announced with an air of annoyance. “No, don't bother moving yet. You're too new, you'll need time to settle into something more, oh what's that technical word? Plasmodium? Point is, you move too far yet, you don't get to stick around. Or if you do, you won't be too sane about it.”  
  
Severus blinked at him. Once he'd got past the accent – Welsh? – the Friar’s nattering made even less sense than it had before.  
  
“How do you mean, move too far? I'm dead soon anyway, that snake bite…” Severus trailed off, and the Friar nodded.  
  
“He's got it now. Well. I suppose I ought to catch you up then.”  
  
*  
  
Harry Potter had died. They'd all felt it as someone passed into their number, and then left again; it had felt almost cleaner than when they'd felt each death Tom Riddle had caused in the grounds.  
  
And they'd all felt each death, welcomed each newcomer and asked ‘did you want to stay?’ of the littlest ones, and then hidden them away as Tom Riddle’s soul was destroyed piece by fractional piece.  
  
That soul they'd banished and ignored.  
  
The school would have many more ghosts the next year, of children who had grown up too fast to know better than to fear death.  
  
Friar Benedict - Gareth Goschawke to those he'd been to school with before he'd gone back to his Muggle father’s roots and joined the priesthood - was speaking with Severus Snape, the only adult addition to the ghosts of Hogwarts from the battle.  
  
And he was annoyed.  
  
The Friar was not a cruel man, but he was a fair one. He'd been raised in his house to treat all people with dignity and kindness equal to what they deserved, and so he told Severus Snape no more and no less than he deserved to know. He began with the death and return of Harry Potter.  
  
“You’ll have to stay here, of course,” Benedict finished once he'd explained what had happened in the last day since Snape’s death. Snape, curse the man, had the audacity to blink slowly at him, so the Fat Friar continued.  
  
“It's not going to be safe for you up there, even as a ghost. There's far too many children hurt because of you and your actions – and yes, we know the whole story. Don't think for a moment we haven't been fully caught up on every last detail. You did what you did out of selfishness, and while a selfish means can sometimes have good ends, imagine what you could have done if you'd done better to begin with.”  
  
*  
  
Days later – Severus assumed it was days later, time seemed to pour through him rather than pass around him now – he had another visitor.  
  
The Bloody Baron paced in front of him for a few long and tense minutes, feet only sometimes connecting with the ground as though gravity had any grasp. Then at length he whirled and faced him.  
  
“You are barred from the castle proper,” he rasped, and for the first time Severus considered the rasp as though he would the voice of a man who’d been crying, rather than as a threat. “You will not enter the Slytherin Rooms. You will not enter the classrooms, nor come into contact with any students – living or living-impaired. The faculty have been informed of your presence. Your fate will be decided by the living, but until their judgement has passed, your keep is determined by me.”  
  
“And who are you to keep me here?” Severus asked, and knew it was a mistake when the Baron drew close and held a knife to his throat.  
  
“I am the ghost of Slytherin House,” he snarled. “You have been living until recently, so I could have excused your ignorance, but you also usurped the post of Hogwarts Headmaster as you breathed, so your blindness is no longer within reason. You are a Slytherin who has died upon the grounds of this school. Were you Griffindor, Mimsy-Porpington would have you, but you're mine. I could choose to rip you into shreds, give you a permanent death, but that will be my honour only if the living see fit to destroy your shade.”  
  
“I wasn't aware that a ghost could harm another,” Severus said, feeling a pinprick of pain he shouldn't be capable of experiencing any longer.  
  
The Baron returned his knife to his belt. “There are many things you do not know, Severus Snape.”  
  
*  
  
Minerva came to see him. Of course she did, the Baron would have told her.  
  
“Severus,” she said, her voice still sharp, and he wondered if she'd become a ghost herself or if she'd simply live as eternally as he'd thought she’d already lived when he was a child.  
  
Funny, that it had been only… twenty years ago.  
  
She hadn't aged much to living eyes, but as a ghost he could see the weight of years on her.  
  
“Minerva,” he intoned.  
  
“I hadn't realised you were so afraid of death,” she commented, leaning perhaps too hard on her cane. Severus shrugged, realising it was pointless to deny it.  
  
“I can't allow you into the castle,” she said, and it was almost sad, almost the apology he knew others wouldn't give him. “The newer ghosts would be too terrified of you, and the children- well. Your term as Headmaster was not kind to them, least of all to the youngest students.”  
  
“And how many times has my portrait been set on fire so far?” He asked mildly. She snorted.  
  
“Seven.”  
  
Severus feigned sitting down on the chair that had somehow managed to survive seven years of Remus Lupin – though in retrospect, perhaps it was not so surprising, if he'd truly been sneaking out each full moon once his friends had become animagi. He gestured to the bed for Minerva, who ignored the offer.  
  
It was funny, Severus thought. Remus Lupin had gone through Hogwarts with a supportive family and three good friends – only one of them had gone dark, in the end. Severus himself had gone through Hogwarts with a house full of friends – or of people whom he'd thought were his friends in the beginning - just as they'd thought he their friend in the end - and the only light one among them had left him.  
  
“You're looking very distant there, Severus,” Minerva called, the whipcrack of a voice that could bring any student back to the present.  
  
“It appears to be a side-effect of being noncorporeal which nobody has ever mentioned. Things which happened to me while I was alive have more hold on me than events since.”  
  
Minerva made a noise which from anybody less dignified, Severus might have called a ‘harrumph’. “That may go some way to explaining Sir Nicholas’ peculiar fixations, I suppose,” she commented.  
  
“I suppose it might.” Severus floated a few inches off the seat of the chair, and didn't bother to correct it.  
  
“I have people I want to see you, however,” Minerva went on, choosing to ignore this behaviour. “If I could bring Peeves over to you I would, but he's proving far too useful with repairing the castle.”  
  
“Useful?” Severus repeated, a little surprised.  
  
“He can lift anything and fix anything. He's been utterly invaluable. And whenever we ask why, he says he's doing it for the Weasley Twins.”  
  
“I… see,” Severus said, although he really didn't. Still, he supposed that the kind of people who played such awful pranks would get on well with such an awful poltergeist. “Who did you want to see me?”  
  
“You'll see,” she drew herself up.  
  
“May I ask one thing?”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“May Fawkes be present at my funeral?” He asked softly, and she stared at him.  
  
“I will add the Phoenix to my list of those who need to speak to you,” she answered, which was neither a yes nor a no, nor indeed a ‘you're not getting a funeral’, at least. “Now, if you don't mind, I'll deal with your corpse.”  
  
Severus gestured wordlessly at his body, where it had been undisturbed since his death. Minerva pulled a minute frown as she waved her wand to cast Mobilicorpus. Nobody liked seeing bodies past Rigor Mortis, Severus privately agreed.  
  
*  
  
Surprisingly, the first visitor he had was the Longbottom boy, dressed almost the same as his father had been when he was found after the Lestranges and Crouch had been done with the shell of the man.  
  
Longbottom stood in the entranceway and his lips were pulled back in a snarl. The Sword of Gryffindor was hanging on his back as though it belonged there, but it wasn't truly there at all. It was simply the spirit of the sword, a part of the boy. It gleamed in the half-light and Severus wondered if it had always been there and only a ghost could see it, or if perhaps it was a new addition.  
  
Then he remembered the feel of the Baron’s dagger at his throat and decided not to bring it up.  
  
“I was afraid of you,” Longbottom spoke first, after almost a full minute’s silence. Severus lifted an eyebrow, and the boy went on. “I was afraid of how you spoke, of how you could hurt me. I was afraid when you wanted me to poison my toad, I was afraid of how you towered over me, and I was afraid of the power you held over me and could choose to abuse. But you know what? I'm not afraid of you any more.”  
  
“Is it because I'm dead?” Severus asked drily.  
  
Longbottom snorted. “No. It's because all this time, it turns out I've been afraid of a coward. I mean, Harry told me what you did. All the things you done, for the Order, and all that… that shit. But you're a coward. You're a ghost and you're a coward and you're a ghost because, on top of all the other things you were a coward over in your life, you're also afraid of death.”  
  
Severus tilted his head and drifted forwards. “And what precisely is that supposed to mean?” He asked in the same voice he'd once asked this particularly dull student about how he'd managed to ruin a particularly simple potion.  
  
"There are all kinds of courage,” recited Neville Longbottom, as though this were something he'd gone to great effort to memorise years ago. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. You only stood up to the people you called friends when it was convenient. At least I was only afraid of a teacher. But you? You were afraid of what?”  
  
Severus folded his arms. “I think you should leave, Mister Longbottom.”  
  
“Yeah. You know what? I should. I don't need to spend time with a coward’s ghost. There's a whole castle full of people who're alive and need help because you out them through a year of hell before there was a great big battle and people died.”  
  
“I did what I could,” Severus whispered.  
  
“You could have tried harder,” Longbottom snapped, and went back the way he came, the sword on his back a shining light all down the tunnel as Severus watched him leave.  
  
*  
  
“Dumbledore once told me to trust you,” Hagrid said, and his voice shook.  
  
Severus turned, not entirely certain how the half-giant had managed to get through to see him, saw the warping of space as the tunnel and doorway had stretched out and changed to accommodate the size of the man, and sighed.  
  
“Hagrid,” he said. He'd never gotten the hang of calling the man ‘Rubeus’, even during his time as a teacher. To him, he'd always been Hagrid, the huge loud booming man who'd greeted every First Year as they'd arrived at the Station, and taken them all for a boat ride over the lake so the Giant Squid could learn their faces and magic.  
  
He'd held Lily’s hand as they'd stepped out onto a boat together. She'd let go of his hand to touch the water lightly as the boats glided along its surface, something he hadn't dared to try. Lily had always been braver than he was.  
  
“Why'd you kill him?” Hagrid asked, voice softer than the man’s lungs should have been capable of.  
  
“Because he asked me to. Because he was already dying, Hagrid. And because if I hadn't, then Draco Malfoy would have needed to. A sixteen-year-old boy, following assassination orders out of sheer blind terror, or a grown man helping another old grown man to die the way he wanted to?”  
  
Hagrid stared. “And that makes it right, do it?”  
  
Severus looked away. He didn't hear Hagrid leave, but when he looked back the man was gone, the tunnel returning to its normal state his wake.  
  
*  
  
“Why did you… Do any of that?”  
  
Severus shut his eyes before he turned. “I believe the words ‘thank you’ are customary in situations such as this, Potter,” he snapped, opening his eyes.  
  
“Yeah, well, I'm not going to be the one saying them then,” Harry Potter replied, and when Severus looked at him, the scar on his forehead was a green brighter than his eyes. “Was all of what you did just because you had a crush on my mum?”  
  
“I don't expect you to understand. The memories I gave you should have explained what you needed to do.”  
  
“Why'd you include so many of her and my Aunt Petunia when they were kids?”  
  
Severus froze. “That… was not intentional,” he whispered when he'd regained his voice. “Though in retrospect, I suppose I should have expected it. What I felt for your mother was complicated.”  
  
“Didn't seem that complicated to me. Sounded like you were being all creepy-Ross about it.”  
  
Severus blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”  
  
“Muggle reference, something I used to have to listen to while my Aunt and Uncle and cousin watched. Wait, no, I forgot.  _Mudblood_  reference. That's what you call us, that's what you called her, right?”  
  
Severus flinched, and wondered again at the nature of pain for a ghost. “My worst memory,” he said softly. “The only time I ever hurt her. I suppose the once was enough. But I never intended to hurt her.”  
  
“You hugged her corpse,” Potter enunciated, and Severus wondered who'd taught this boy with warm green eyes to be cold like that.  
  
“I was in shock.”  
  
“Corpse,” Potter repeated, as though he too had a difficult time processing that.  
  
“The one bright person in my life had just been killed. The only person who'd looked at me with kindness and no ulterior motive, and I'd realised that too late to save her. I love your mother. I became a spy to save her and I failed. And believe me, I've had sixteen years to come to terms with that.”  
  
“You loved her still. That was what your Pensieve said.”  
  
Not in so many words, but Severus sighed in acceptance, a ghost’s breath leaving nothing in the air. “I loved her and I failed her. And from the moment you looked at me with her eyes, I didn't want to fail her again. I see- saw… your father in your body, in the shape of your face and hair. Your mother in your hands, your voice… Your eyes most clearly.”  
  
“You're a terrible teacher. Probably you were a good spy, but you were a terrible teacher.”  
  
“I was also a good Potions Brewer.”  
  
Potter shrugged, and looked like he would have said more but a different voice cut him off.  
  
“Professor?”  
  
Draco stepped out of the tunnel and looked at him, and Severus saw so much of himself in the child that it ached.  
  
Hair lank from stress, skin pale, the way he flinched from Harry Potter for an instant all while standing perfectly still. That was all familiar.  
  
“Sorry, Potter. Uh. Professor McGonagall said I should… visit.”  
  
“I'll be going then,” Potter said, but Draco caught his arm, clearly surprising everybody in the room, living or ghost.  
  
“No, stay. I won't be long.” Draco stood in the light Potter’s scar gave off and Severus tried – and naturally failed – to catch his breath.  
  
Draco glowed in a light that was shifting from green to gold, ever so slowly. It reminded Severus of a warm summer’s day, like it had been when he'd looked Lily Evans in the eye and decided that one day he’d marry her, the way that children could decide such things.  
  
The fancies of a child and the fancies of a dead man seemed very similar in that moment.  
  
“I… I wanted to thank you. Professor. For saving me. For doing what I shouldn't have been- anyway… And I suppose… Well. I mean, um.” Draco looked away. “Look, Potter, everybody’s talking about it, and it’s probably because you told us what happened and everything? But… Professor, thank you for taking my place. It should be me dead in here, we both know that.”  
  
Severus tipped his head at him. “I wish I could say something like ‘you are welcome’, Mister Malfoy, but I will admit that this particular eventuality had not occurred to me when I agreed to Albus’ plan.”  
  
Draco shrugged, blond hair still aglow in the light cast by Potter’s scar. “Even so. I brought you some things?” The boy finally took his hands from his cloak pockets, producing some atrociously mouldy blue cheese and…  
  
Of all the things.  
  
“Is that an American Ghost Apple, Draco?” Severus asked kindly.  
  
“It's a Russian one, actually. Where-?”  
  
Severus pointed to where his body had lain until Minerva had collected it, and Draco walked over, placed the apple and cheese on the ground there, and stood back.  
  
Severus floated over and picked it up, pocketing his prize and stroking a finger through the cheese. “Thank you.”  
  
“You're welcome.”  
  
Draco looked at Potter for a moment, then back. “What do you think you might do now?”  
  
“I don't know.”  
  
“I was surprised, when I heard you were a ghost. After all you've done… I thought you were going to be…”  
  
“Braver?” Severus asked lightly.  
  
“Yes,” Draco spoke softly, and they both looked him in the eye. Two children nearly killed by a war in which he'd played a part on both sides.  
  
“We'll see.”  
  
“I suppose we will,” Potter said, starting to back away a little. Draco gave him the smile Severus usually witnessed being given at funerals, and turned to follow.  
  
After a time – Severus had no way of knowing how long, only that he could no longer see the children together in the tunnel, his sense of time passing having fled when his spirit separated from his body - he took the apple from his pocket, turning it over and over in his hands.  
  
“There are all kinds of courage,” he mused softly. And therefore, he supposed, all kinds of cowardice.  
  
No more cowardice, Severus decided.  
  
*  
  
Beneath the eerily-still branches of the Whomping Willow, Fawkes alighted on Harry’s shoulder with a gentle enough touch that Harry didn't realise he was there until he heard the bird begin to sing.  
  
“That's not the Lament,” Draco whispered, eyes wide.  
  
“No,” Harry agreed, reaching up and stroking a finger down Fawkes’ chest. “Maybe it's a new song?”


End file.
